


the prince & the mechanic

by purplepurrgil



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Reylo, F/M, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Palps was dead and stayed dead and there were never any fucking clones goodnight, author puts canon in a blender to justify cinderella au in gffa, content warning: indentured servitude, content warning: mention of death, finn is prince, rose is cinderella, this fic condemns the military industrial complex and war profiteering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23264260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplepurrgil/pseuds/purplepurrgil
Summary: Prince Finneas Jin of Hynestia searches for his purpose amidst the chaos of returning home to his family. Across the galaxy, Rose Tico, left behind on Canto Bight in the clutches of a cruel debt after the death of her sister, has given up on hope. Cinderella AU.
Relationships: Finn/Rose Tico
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	the prince & the mechanic

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my poor long suffering friend, Padfoot, who was this fic's first reader and indulges me in my 3am rambles. I promise I will get back to a regular sleep schedule. 
> 
> This is my first fic so any and all constructive criticism is very welcome. If you would be interested in beta reading, please let me know!
> 
> Finn's homeplanet and family are all from the book Lando's Luck by Justina Ireland. I really enjoyed reading it and her writing style, and am excited to read Star Wars: The High Republic: A Test of Courage which should be coming out in September. Definitely worth a read if you're looking for some new Star Wars content after the nihilistic mess that was TROS. If you have questions about anything, let me know in the comments. 
> 
> I'm aware that there are a lot of complicated feelings about John Boyega right now in fandom, but I don't want to hear about any of them on this fic. I'll delete any comments that have anything to do with that, and if for some reason you hate Rose or Finn and would like to share that: turn back, this is not for you. Same goes for if you take issue with me also being a Reylo shipper. Dead Dove Don't Eat and all. 
> 
> With that housekeeping out of the way, here's the fic.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

The NEW REPUBLIC stands.

After the Battle of Endor,

the galaxy has rebuilt, but

tension brews in the shadows.

In the reconstruction, the

Hynestians return from Livno III

to their homeworld Hynestia,

reclaiming it after its occupation

from the evil Galactic Empire,

angering IMPERIAL SYMPATHIZERS.

Unaware of rising antiRepublic

sentiments, Prince Finneas Jin of

Hynestia’s studies in the ways

of the Force nears its end on

Lothal with Master of the

Daughters of Mortis....

* * *

**34 ABY - Lothal**

For three years Finn had chased the Force. It had started as a tickle in his ear, almost as impatient as he was. Finally, it had led him to Lothal.

Well, it was more like the Force had led him to confide in his mother, who had pointed him in the direction of her old smuggler friend, who had then directed him to the “acquired taste” of a friend of a friend named Maz who only after a long interrogation over purple glandis flower juice had seen fit to reveal that she did in fact know a Force user who could help him, if only she could remember how to get in contact with her.

So she had led him down through her castle’s many winding staircases to her collection of records going back to at least the High Republic Era, given him a name to work off of, and left him to do the rest. Five months in and he had made it through maybe a quarter of the records. One night he had fallen asleep in the records room and woken up with a start to the wind of flapping wings from an intruding convor. After chasing the disruptor out of the dungeons (how had it even gotten inside?) he noticed that in the commotion one letter had been blown farther away from the rest, only to realize that that letter held the answer he had sought. He ran from the dungeon to find Maz, his stomach still rumbling from the night before when he had given his supper to a poor old woman… completely unrelated to his sudden good fortune, of course.

From there he had hopped from planet to planet by securing paid passage on freighters. The Hynestian royal was fairly private so he hadn’t feared recognition, and if anyone had noticed how unsure he had been outside the shelter of royal life, they gave no sign. 

Upon landing on Lothal, he had waded straight into the seemingly endless sea of grass. Out beyond the walls of Capitol City, there was a Jedi Temple, and there he would find the Jedi Master. Unfortunately, Finn had not expected the temple to be so elusive, and soon night fell overhead. Under the light of the two moons he had trudged on, until he stopped and saw that the world around him stretched silver into the dark of the horizon, and there was no more direction to hope to follow. He had sat there for what might have been hours if time had passed at all.

Then, he heard a noise. Somewhere in the distance some creature – a wolf maybe – called out. Tired, dehydrated, and considering the possibility that it was all a dream, Finn followed the call.

Light broke as he stumbled towards a clearing where the grass fell away between a triad of rocky spires. A white hooded Togruta woman sat next to a small fire. She had held a long white staff that wound itself into a circle at the top, where a green and white convor had sat, watching him. Only when Finn came close enough from the opposite side of the fire that he could count the blue lines on her lekku did the woman open her eyes.

“Are you Jedi Master Ahsoka Tano?” For who else could she have been?

“Who wants to know?” Her voice was warm, and had carried the feeling of an age old friend with an inside joke. 

“Finn, Prince Finneas Jin of Hynestia.” He had straightened then, still not convinced that it wasn’t all a dream. “I’m looking for her, I heard that she knows the ways of the Force.” 

“I do, but I am no Jedi.” Ahsoka had smiled then.

“Pleased to meet you” he had said, not knowing what else to say. In the moment to ask more had felt like pressing his luck, but he pushed on. “If you’re not a Jedi – my mistake – what are you?”

That time she laughed. “Isn’t that what everyone wants to know? What the Cosmic Force wants us to be? If it’s a title you want from me, I am a Daughter. A Daughter of Mortis, if you will. A name that means very little in any real sense of things. I know the Force, and I can feel its strength in you. I could have been a Jedi, but that was not the will of the Cosmic Force. I don’t pretend to understand its will most of the time, but I have learned to be patient with it. And now you’re here.”

Finn had thought back to that day many times in the years after. He did not know what Master Ahsoka had seen in him when they first met, or what him being there meant for the Cosmic Force. Initially he hadn’t even understood what the Cosmic Force was. He had met Jedi before, even traveled to Master Luke Skywalker’s school once when he was very young with his father, but he had only begun to attempt to parse what was Luke’s doctrine, what was legend, and what he had felt inside himself.

What could she have thought of the wandering prince playing at adventure and self-discovery in the costume of a common man? His boots had been lined with blue Gherlian fur, betraying any naïve intention of anonymity he’d had along the journey. Even as he studied, and Ahsoka became less and less a Master and more and more a friend, his thoughts would keep bringing him back to those damned boots.

But his studies had never slowed for his secret fears.

At first he had simply followed Master Ahsoka, walking through the sea of grass, making camp whenever the mood struck her. She had used the time to rid him of his misplaced notions of a still standing Jedi Temple on Lothal, binaries of Sith and Jedi he had learned from Skywalker in his youth, and just about everything else about how the Force worked. Then he had followed her as she scaled the side of another rocky spire, where he first learned how to meditate with the Force. 

Ahsoka’s lessons came from their surroundings. A circling of edgehawks above a mother loth-cat and her kittens taught the natural order of things, but also the importance of compassion. Nursing the kittens with his own fingertip and the powdered milk he’d brought all the way from Takodana, that had taught patience. Master Ahsoka had seemed to always take some odd pleasure in telling him to have patience, and while he saw the virtue in it, living it was another matter.

When they came upon an old mine from the days of the Galactic Empire, she said that if what he needed was there, he’d get a sign. That night while Ahsoka slept, he heard the wolf call again. It seemed to come from within the mine. When he emerged that morning Ahsoka was brewing tea. He had held out the crystal, baring its colorless luster to the light of the sunrise. Ahsoka had sipped her tea and commented that it was time to start back to Capitol City.

There he’d built his lightsaber, and when it ignited and blue light bathed the room, he had felt something inside himself click into place.

Ahsoka no longer had a saber, but that didn’t stop her from training him to use one. The first time he held his kyber crystal, Finn had heard music. He heard it again when running through forms or slicing rocks Ahsoka hurled at him. It was less fighting and more dancing, he thought. He and his lightsaber were one moving to the rhythm that the Force kept.

Finally, Ahsoka had told Finn that it was time to go home. He had asked her why, and she had smiled and said that he would teach himself the rest.

“A Master has to know when it is time to let their student find their own way. And anyways, you need experience.”

He had thought that the three years had qualified as experience, but Morai the convor had looked at him so intensely that he hadn’t raised the point.

Now, Ahsoka had promised him one final lesson.

Finn sat, staring out over the ledge of the rock formation. The final lesson, whatever it was, was taking its own sweet time.

The sun was setting, and orange light crept towards the two of them. Still, silence. The sadness sinking in his stomach burned cold and empty.

Morai hopped from foot to foot between him and Ahsoka.

“Where do you want to be when you’re as old as me?” Ahsoka turned towards him. 

“How old are you?” He regretted it in an instant.

She laughed. “Old enough.” 

Morai squawked and hopped into Finn’s lap, with no regard for the sharpness of her talons through his pants. His gaze sank down to the expanse of the Lothal savannah, which was quickly turning golden in the light. “I want… to be somewhere I can belong. Where I don’t feel stuck, but I also don’t want to leave.”

He didn’t turn to face her, but he felt Ahsoka look up towards the clouds. “That’s a good place to be. Know what it looks like?”

He shrugged. “Probably back home.” Morai moved from one leg to the other. “I love it there, and by that time I think I could feel like I was meant to stay there.”

“Because you’re part of the royal family?”

“Because that’s my family. My sister will be queen, but she’ll need all the help she can get. That’s what Daughters do, help people.” Ahsoka nodded. “And I needed to become a Daughter. I don’t think I could go back and not be one. I like the fighting parts, but I don’t know who to fight. There aren’t any more wars.”

His master seemed to be lost in thought then, and he felt the emptiness of his chest. Finn continued, shifting his gaze to the convor on his lap as if talking to the bird herself. “I don’t want wars. But I look back at my mother and grandmother, who stood against the Empire. I was born on Hynestia, and it’s the only thing I remember. But for my mom, she got home, there was so much to fix. And she fixed it. She built a planet back up from the ashes the Empire had left. She’s still fixing things, looking for new ways to get us back to before there was any war. She went on so many adventures, when she was only half as old as me. She saved a planet, twice. I know it’s not fair, but I don’t know what I can do to live up to that. I’m not in line. I’m not a great pilot. So sometimes I think – and I know it’s wrong – that if there was a war, maybe that would give me something to fight for. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“It does.” Ahsoka turned towards him. Glancing up, he saw the open compassion in her blue eyes. “You know my story, the wars I fought in. I wouldn’t want them back, and I feel what they cost us every day, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t make some things easier.”

Finn waited to see if she had anything more to say, unsure of his words. “I know that the point of being a Daughter is helping, but I don’t know what that’s going to mean outside of here.”

Ahsoka shrugged. “So far there’s only the two of us who use that name. It’s an archetype. I found it in a dream and between worlds. In some ways it’s exactly like being a Jedi, in others it’s very different. Ultimately what I think I meant by it was compassion. Most of the time I just sit with the Force and try to listen. Help people when I can, but it’s been lonely. I helped train a young boy, younger than you, once before. He already had a Master, but I’d been just like him before. Then he saved me. I’m still waiting to save him. You have taken everything you can from my teaching, now you get to make your next chapter.”

Finn didn’t feel like he had any more answers or clarity than when he’d started the conversation. “Any advice?”

She held out her hand and Morai hopped onto her arm. “Find people who keep you compassionate. I think finding the people who remind us to be better is the best we can hope for. Learn to let go of them, but if you can tag along with each other, do. We all get old eventually, and I’ve seen so many lonely people in my time.”

There wasn’t anything to say to that. 

Morai nuzzled Ahsoka’s arm. “So,” Finn tried. “… was that the lesson?”

“Depends, did you learn something?”

“Unclear.”

“Close enough.”

* * *

The following morning, Finn boarded a freighter headed towards Hynestia. Absently, he realized that the color of the lining on his boots had faded away.   
  
  



End file.
